An experimental comparison of routing protocols in multi hop ad hoc networks

This study experimentally compares the performance of three different multi hop ad hoc network routing protocols. Traditional routing protocols have proven inadequate in wireless ad hoc networks, motivating the need for ad hoc specific routing protocols. This study tests link state, distance vector and biologically inspired approaches to routing using OLSR, Babel and BATMAN routing protocols. The importance of OSI layers is also discussed. This study concludes that the routing protocol's overhead is the largest determinant of performance in small multi hop ad hoc networks. The results show that Babel outperforms OLSR and BATMAN routing protocols and that the OSI layer of the routing protocol has little impact on performance.